Lisey's Story(131)
"No, what?"
"Spit, if you want to know."
Lisey pushed the button that lowered her window, spat, and wiped her still slightly swollen lower lip with the heel of her hand. "What, Manda?"
"Said if I kissed a boy with my mouth open, I'd get pregnant."
"Bullshit, he never!"
"It's true, and I'll tell you something else."
"What?"
"I'm pretty sure he believed it!"
Then they were both laughing.
Part XIII. Lisey and Amanda
(The Sister Thing)
1
Now that she had Amanda, Lisey wasn't exactly sure what to do with her. Right up to Greenlawn, all the steps had seemed clear, but as they drove toward Castle Rock and the thunderheads massing over New Hampshire, nothing seemed clear. She had just kidnapped her supposedly catatonic sister from one of central Maine's finer nuthouses, for God's sweet sake.
Amanda, however, seemed far from nuts; any fears Lisey harbored of her slipping back into catatonia dissipated in a hurry. Amanda Debusher hadn't been this sharp in years. After listening to everything that had passed between Lisey and Jim "Zack" Dooley, she said: "So. Scott's manuscripts may have been the main thing when he turned up, but now he's after you, because he's your basic loony who gets hard hurting women. Like that weirdo Rader, out in Wichita."
Lisey nodded. He hadn't raped her, but he'd gotten hard, all right. What amazed her was Amanda's succinct re-statement of her situation, even down to the Rader comparison...whose name Lisey wouldn't have remembered. Manda had the advantage of a little distance, of course, yet her clarity of mind was still startling.
Up ahead was a sign reading CASTLE ROCK 15. As they passed it, the sun sailed behind the building clouds. When Amanda next spoke her voice was quieter. "You mean to do it to him before he can do it to you, don't you? Kill him and get rid of the body in that other world." Up ahead of them, thunder rumbled. Lisey waited. Are we doing the sister thing? she thought. Is that what this is?
"Why, Lisey? Other than that I guess you can?"
"He hurt me. He f**ked with me." She didn't think she sounded like herself at all, but if truth was the sister thing - she thought it was - then this was it, sure. "And let me tell you, honey: the next time he f**ks with me is going to be the last time he f**ks with anybody."
Amanda sat looking straight ahead at the unrolling road with her arms folded under her scant bosom. At last she said, almost to herself, "You always were the steel in his spine."
Lisey looked at her, more than surprised. She was shocked.
"Say what?"
"Scott. And he knew it." She lifted one of her arms and looked at the red scar there. Then she looked at Lisey. "Kill him,"
she said with chilling indifference. "I have no problem with that."
2
Lisey swallowed and heard a click in her throat. "Look, Manda, I really don't have any clear idea what I'm doing. You have to know that up front. I'm pretty much flying blind here."
"Oh, you know what, I don't believe that," Amanda said, almost playfully. "You left messages saying that you'd see him at eight o'clock in Scott's study - one on your answering machine, and one with that Pittsburgh professor, in case Dooley called there. You mean to kill him and that's fine. Hey, you gave the cops their shot, didn't you?" And before Lisey could reply: "Sure you did. And the guy waltzed right past them. Almost cut your tit off with your own can opener."
Lisey came around a curve and found herself behind another waddling pulp-truck; it was like the day she and Darla had come back from admitting Amanda all over again. Lisey squeezed the brake, once more feeling guilty that she was driving barefoot. Old ideas died hard.
"Scott had plenty of spine," she said.
"Yep. And he used it all getting out of his childhood alive."
"What do you know about that?" Lisey asked.
"Nothing. He never said anything about what life was like when he was a kid. Didn't you think I noticed? Maybe Darla and Canty didn't, but I did, and he knew I did. We knew each other, Lisey - the way the only two people not drinking at a big booze-up know each other. I think that's why he cared about me. And I know something else."
"What?"
"You better pass this truck before I strangle on his exhaust."
"I can't see far enough."
"You can see plenty far enough. Besides, God hates a coward."
A brief pause. "That's something else people like Scott and me know all about."
"Manda - "
"Pass him! I'm strangling here!"
"I really don't think I have enough - "
"Lisey's got a boyfriend! Lisey and Zeke, up in a tree, K-I-SS-I - "
"Beanpole, you're being a puke."
Amanda, laughing: "Kissy-kissy, facey-facey, little Lisey!"
"If something's coming the other way - "
"First comes love, then comes marritch, then comes Lisey with a - "
Without allowing herself to think about what she was doing, Lisey mashed the Beemer's accelerator with her bare foot and swung out. She was dead even with the pulp-truck's cab when another pulp-truck appeared over the brow of the next hill, traveling toward them.